1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a musical tone generating apparatus desirable for an electronic musical instrument, an automatic musical performance apparatus, or the like, more particularly to a technique to reproduce a sound field corresponding to positions of musical instruments which are arranged on a stage of concert hall, jazz club house, or the like.
2. Prior Art
In a conventional sound effect technique, sound effect control information is preset in an apparatus so that the sound effect (e.g. reverberative effect) is desirably presented to a concert hall, jazz club house, or the like. Then, assuming that a sound effect for a specific concert hall is selected by an operator, or automatically selected, a specific sound effect is supplied of that concert hall based on the sound effect control information, by which this specific sound effect is converted to a musical tone signal.
Such conventional technique can present to some extent a desirable sound effect for listening to a performance, however, a sound field cannot be produced corresponding to respective positions of the musical instruments which are arranged on the stage of the concert hall, that is, the conventional technique cannot present a feeling of being at a live performance. In other words, the feeling given by the conventional technique is different from the feelings related to an actual sound field (related to a position of the sound image, a frequency component of the musical tone, a magnitude of the sound effect, or the like) since many types of the musical instruments are arranged at various positions on the stage of the concert hall, in case of a live performance. Accordingly, the conventional apparatus cannot present an accurate feeling of the sound field.
On the other hand, it is well known that an electronic musical instrument can have several speakers to reproduce a performance with the position of the sound image and sound effect varied by the adjustment of volume controls, switches, or the like, in which these volume controls and switches are mounted on a panel of the apparatus.
However, this is very complicated in that many select elements such as the volume controls and switches must be adjusted to reproduce a desirable feeling of the sound field, especially it is not easy to adjust a sound field based on an imagination of the position of the musical instruments as if these musical instruments are arranged on the stage of the concert hall. Up until recently, the sound effect control information has been thus preset in the apparatus to reproduce the sound effect corresponding to a stage of the concert hall, requiring a great deal of the information to be preset in the apparatus, and an apparatus of highly complicated construction.